


not blinded by the lights

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Ascension to Godhood, Epistolary, Exandrian History, Gen, Gods, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Four steps Raishan takes along the path to ascension.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenofspade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/gifts).



> Many a rat I have befriended  
> And so many a thorn stood between  
> But of all the demons I've known  
> None could compare to you  
> — 'See the Light', Ghost

{ Something that might be called a diary entry, written in trails of glowing fungi across the walls of a cave deep in the swamps of Tal'Dorei. }

* * *

 

Vasselheim was alive on the Matron of Ravens' ascension night. Alive as a city as obsessed with things beyond life could be, in any case, but I have learned over my time here that those with the keenest awareness of worlds beyond our own are the ones most apt to embrace ours with a fervor it does not deserve.

Whatever I had hoped to find that night, I did not encounter. I found something better, and I am entrusting it to these plants which have watched over me and mine since before I hatched.

I have always known that neither a love for life, nor a celebration of death, will save any of the worshippers of the raven, of course. Mere life, mere parties, do not mean they are deserving of this world, pale imitation of what it was in the days before, when magic was free and creatures such as myself were given the respect they deserved.

No one cares to strive for anything worth reaching, these days. Humans are obsessed with their townships and their cities, and the elves don't bother with Exandria more than they have to. Perhaps the dwarves come closest, in their half-manic delving beneath the earth. Almost a pity they're as dense as their beloved stone, and wouldn't know the world's core if they drowned in it.

I have been bored for nearly as many years as I have been alive, it sometimes feels. Never enough to want to give it up, but enough to wonder what else there is for me. In Vasselheim that night I found an answer in the stories of life-drunk revelers.

None of them could agree on the details of _how_ the guardian of the passage into death so well avoided treading it herself - for they all did agree that that once was the path laid out in front of their once-mortal patron.

Some say it was a spell that she created, one that pushed her beyond the Divine Gate and left her with no other choice but to become divine herself. Some say it was an accident, some twist of power when the children of the first age were still being granted piecemeal knowledge of the arcane weave that knotted around her, plunged her into a pocket of elemental chaos and fashioned her into something only magic knew. Some say she had to deal death to possess it, that there was a god of passage and fate and winter before her, and she proved her worth three times by cutting out his three hearts. Some say there was hardly any magic involved at all, only the cunning needed to survive a maze of traps and the luck to survive touching the central stone of material from beyond the sun and stars.

I know something of truth and lies and how they become twisted in others' mouths. There is truth to be found in all those stories, most likely, though none of them consider her own desires.

But I want this. I want this with a strength I once thought left behind in my years as a youngling.

No matter the story, I learned the same lesson: at the places where life and magic are both found in excess, it is possible to become a god. With enough study, with enough truths - I can make any and all of those stories my story as well.

I will carve out my own place among your pantheon. I will rise.


	2. Chapter 2

{ A letter, found among the possessions of Archdruid Keyleth, Headmistress of the Air Ashari, after her disappearance in 1840 PD }

* * *

 

This world used to care for life.

I saw this world for the first time when I reached my head above the briar-patch in the devastated swamp where I was born, when I first beat my wings uselessly against the air that would later carry me. I saw this world, indeed I have seen much more of it than all but the oldest mages and the oldest dragons, and I refuse to believe that mortal ages dictate that so much time has passed that I cannot shape what I see before me.

I love this world. I am no elf, to beg for understanding, I will not plead that you must believe me, as if your belief in my love might absolve me. I know precisely what I am doing, and why I am doing it. So I present this to you as a fact: I love this world.

I will love it more when it is wild and free, unleashed beyond the hand of the now-tamed Wildmother and her city-dwelling lover.

And so I will tear it apart, if that is what it takes for my ascension, what is necessary for me to remake it into what it deserves to be.

You understand, Keyleth. Even now, as you pretend your glare can slice my head clean from its shoulders, you understand why you're fighting with me, why I am that which you cannot do without and can only begin to fight. There is not enough of the wild in your Vox Machina, in your captive sun and your inventor and your hedonist.

Perhaps the barbarian. Perhaps the twins. I want you to know that I considered them before I chose you, Keyleth. I want you to know that I chose you because there is too much of the wild in you. You, and only you, my darling unbelieving child, understand what it means to want to be a god.

I am leaving this for you because you are the only one I trust to lead me and then to follow me. Now, don't mistake me, I do believe and expect you will kill me. It is, in its own way, a comforting expectation to return to: this disease I have fought against for decades will not be my demise. I have seen fate play out far too many times over my many years of life to believe I can subvert it alone. But it was not until I met you that I understood the means of my victory, and its cost.

I will not bow to my disease, to a nameless druid's curse. I will fight until the end, as I must, and when the time comes it will be you at my throat, rather than the disease in my blood. And after the time has passed, after you have gathered the necessary components, ripped the necessary gates, fed my body the necessary bones, spoken the necessary words in the language of life that you so like to pretend we do not share - then I will be a god.

Don't worry. I won't force you to worship me. Not every god has to be worshipped in order to survive: a forgotten god is still fundamentally divine as long as the seeds of life inside them are still tied to the universal fabric, to the soils of Exandria and the waves of the Astral Sea. Worshippers strengthen those bonds, of course, use their belief to stitch to the gods to the skies like captive butterflies pinned out for a child's amusements, but the threads would remain once the ritual of ascension was completed even if their name, mortal or divine, was never again spoken in praise or reverence.

Did you think worship came easily to the first followers of the Matron of Ravens? No, after she arose, she spent countless years in the Shadowfell gathering power, learning the truth of her new nature, her new abilities. If she cared less for fate, I might even admire her. As it is, I simply grasp the path she laid out for me.

You might wonder why I know this, why I _care_. I know you think me nothing more than a charming beast at times, to which I say: well, so are you. Without the charm, of course, but we can't all have everything. When you are as old as I am, when your memories have long since become parts of you that you couldn't forget them even if you wanted to, well, you'll understand. Ascension rituals are poorly understood and much written about, offer endless possibilities for choice and customisation, and require intense study of all schools of magic. To put it in terms you might understand: I am bored, and have nothing better to do, after my disease comes to an end.

You don't understand the boredom yet, child, I can feel it in how desperately you fight. I mocked you with that word, _child_ , once before and I won't apologise for it - in fact I think you would think less of me if I did - but you must understand, it is only the truth. You are going to see a thousand years, Keyleth, and as one who has already seen more than eight hundred - oh, the world you so love will not hold your interest for half that time. Assuming, of course, it stays in form where you _can_ love it, and it does not wither to something so pitiful that you need to spend hours fantasising about infiltrating a Cobalt Soul monastery and building a castle from all the books you've read before summoning even the energy to get out of bed of a morning.

And then, of course, you have to face the fact that you already did that, when you were barely five hundred, and then it's only the need to look up mortal lifespans again to check the likelihood that enough new books have been written in that time to make it worth going back that ends up getting you out of bed.

But then you're up, and you're still living, despite the thing inside you eating away slowly at your vitality. Oh, yes, I see it inside you, for all you like to pretend it's not there. It's only a disease like mine by some types of reckoning, your sadness, but it opens your skin and forces you to weep away your heart all the same.

I cannot cut out my infection on my own, any more than you can exorcise your sadness. Don't you know by now that your friends are only a temporary balm? They'll be lost permanently to time long before your sadness is, for you will always be carrying the world, in one form or another. Waste of your natural talents, really.

You've asked me why more times than I can count, for all I've only known you for weeks. I've given you the answers you expect of me, and they haven't been lies - oh, one day you'll learn how special you were, that I didn't lie to you, but there wouldn't have been any satisfaction in it, you're much more fun to toy with in other ways -

Keyleth, you understand what it means to live in the borderlands. You know what lies beyond the gates your beloved Ashari guard. You know what it means to pass back and forth between planes, to watch time pass differently in different realms. And more than anything you understand what it means to be curious. You're so very different from the timid child those in Pyrah who knew of you talked about, even if you haven't yet fully embraced your future.

Have you even created a spell before? Do you know what it's like, to move just so, to reach down to pick up a leaf and find that your hand has slipped between the threads of the arcane weave that makes up the fabric of every plane, find that whatever you have plucked isn't a leaf anymore, even though it might once have been? Do you know how it feels to take that energy inside you, so vast, so bright, until you feel as though it will rip your very self from your bones?

I used to feel like that all the time, before this curse began to drain me so. I will feel like this again, forever, when the magic inside me has twisted through every plane and you have remade me, divine.

I will not beg. I will only tell you what I know of you: You are wild. You are angry. You are more than the material plane will ever let you be. You are the only one strong enough to cast spells that I created for myself. You will know what to do with what I have left you.

After that - well, not even I can know the entirety of the future. I know that ascension is possible, and I know that it is beautiful, and I know that it will hurt.

This is a gift, Keyleth. I do not know when you will kill me, and I do not know when you will read this, and I do not know how long it will take you to gather the components and find my body again. But I know what you will do.

See you soon.


	3. Chapter 3

{ One copy of the spell _Plane Shift_ , written in a Earth-slanted Druidic dialect of the arcane common tongue, by a hand wielding green ink on black-stained parchment, carrying the following annotations. }

* * *

 

It is said that when the gods retreated they sealed themselves behind a gate so vast not even the oldest of those beings from past the stars could begin to explain to their chosen warlocks what they would need to comprehend in order to judge its size. It is said that the gate is golden, and made up of knives in number beyond that which the oldest of the archfey would use to begin to describe the addition of every drop of rain, every blade of grass, every flake of snow, and every breath of wind they have experienced since the beginning of their existence.

It is said that the gate is a golden fire that tears through the fabric of every world. That is all I have found that is entirely consistent across tales, and therefore it is the only assurance I can give you that your planeshift has successfully carried you through the lesser-travelled paths of the Astral Sea, and you have crossed into the lands where the gods make their homes.

It is difficult to measure time in the Astral Sea, and more difficult still to measure time in the various divine realms, given that no verified travelers have so far returned from those realms. The only certainty is that it would be much too dangerous an assumption to believe that time has done us the courtesy of behaving there as it does in our realm. Even the Feywild, our closest reflection, cannot assure us of that.

But this is a distraction from my point. The divine gate, vast an incomprehensible as it may be, is a creation, not a natural feature of the fabric of the planes. This suggests that the realms of the gods, difficult to access though they may be in these times, are not disconnected from the Astral Sea. Rather, the Divine Gate serves as a barrier reef, ensuring those island planes stay safe in their hidden bay, unknown to all but those who have been gifted knowledge of the path.

The other suggestion is far more worrisome, to the point that I hesitate to write it down. But though I live now among the beloved of the Wildmother, I remember the promise my mother's mother's mother made to the Knowing Mistress at what they believed to be the end of all things. And so I must make this record, though I pray it is never found.

The gods were not bound to their realms from the beginnings of time. There is nothing stopping a determined traveller - especially with a holy token to guide them - from traversing the Astral Sea with this spell and retrieving untold powers.

And once they have done so ... there may not be anything stopping a god from arising on the Material Plane. Such an ascension may rip open the Gate, cause unknown tidal waves of destruction to radiate across the Sea as the change reverberates through all things living and otherwise. Perhaps the Gate will swallow the new god's realm, perhaps some piece of Exandria will be ripped asunder to be the new god's playground.

Perhaps nothing will happen at all. And, may the Knowing Mistress forgive me who made no pledge of my own to her, I have no desire to find out.


	4. Chapter 4

{ A list, hastily scribbled, with two lines forming one large X from corner to corner across the page, as if to suggest the writer had discarded the ideas but wished them to be preserved in some form. }

* * *

 

  * Tuning fork: Does she even need to go to a specific realm? She shouldn't go to a specific realm! I'm sticking her somewhere she can't get out of. Does that mean I have to go there first? This is why I shouldn't have said I was bored.
  * Worth at least 250 gold pieces: Would be easier if I could just make it out of 250 gold pieces. Oh, fuck it, ask Vex.
  * Metal: Allura says "the fancy kind", which I should have known is what I would get for asking her about something that isn't a shield.
  * Necessary bones: Vague! Annoying! I need to not be dumb about this.
  * Lair: I probably have to go there too? FUCK YOU, RAISHAN, I HAVE MEETINGS.
  * Gate: I should wish it would tear her apart, but I don't know if she even wants to cross it. The knives - it's a good dream!
  * Life: She made ... things. I shouldn't even call them life. I shouldn't want to believe her. But - she's not Melora's. I'm not Melora's. She used to respect her just like I do and it shouldn't matter but it does.
  * I'm getting off track.
  * What do I need if I need to bring her back? That's not even the question. Bringing her back is easy, it's too easy. Uvenda taught me the secrets of true resurrection years ago, and Zephra does everything I want. What else do I need to do to make her divine? I wish that was a harder question.
  * I can ask for forgiveness. I'm not her. Pike, I don't know how to pray but I think I pray that you forgive me. I think I'm sorry.
  * Challenge: It's what the Raven Queen did, after all. If Raishan challenges one of the Betrayer Gods - if she challenges someone like the Cloaked Serpent - doesn't that make her right?
  *     * I fought beside you and I've fought against you and I'll do them both again and again and again.
    * You'll never be rid of me. I'd do it, to keep the world safe.
    * If gods can be made gods can be killed. It doesn't have to be permanent. It can be a cycle. History was always a cycle, titan against god, god against god, god against mortal, mortal against - well, if the answer is gonna be titan (it's gonna be titan. Zahra keeps sending me ominous letters from Vasselheim), I could use some help.
    * I've done a lot of research on green dragons. The one thing they can't poison is their own words. Lies, tricks, all that fey shit - but she's fucking right, she never lied to me.
    * Look. I could have a god in my pocket. One who's offered to let me kill her before. It's - shouldn't this be harder?
  * You were nothing when I left you. You couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't _remember_. And now you're asking me to let you be everything. And I'm -
  * I knew. In the letter. I knew before, and I'm not doing this for you I'm doing this because if you do it on your own you'll be - something undead and evil and I can't look at that, I can barely look at you.
  * Forget it. Forget it. Plane shift doesn't matter. One thread from the Tempest's gate plunged through your heart with my hand and you'll be pinned to the Weave between here and the Elemental Plane of Air forever.
  * No joy in conquest. You'll be a god - my god. Right where I placed you. Immobile, undeniable, mine and the Tempest's.
  * You were right and I hate that you were right about me I hate that you were right about me I hate that you were right about me I hate that you were right about me.




End file.
